Watch the moment Nigel Farage was overcome with emotion as he delivered a heartfelt tribute to Chagossians standing against Labour’s bid to hand over their homeland.
Ex-Conservative MP Adam Holloway, who served as an officer for the British Army, is helping to lead an operation made up of four Chagossians to establish a permanent settlement – more than half a century after the original population was evicted.
The landing party defied a British Government exclusion zone to set foot on Île du Coin, part of the coral atoll of Peros Banhos, on Monday morning.
With the First Minister of the Government-in-exile Misley Mandarin in tow, the group wanted to make it possible for the 322 people who were born on the island and who are still living today to come home before they die.
Mr Holloway – in a dramatic fightback against Sir Keir Starmer’s attempt to cede the British archipelago in the Indian Ocean to Chinese ally Mauritius – planted the Chagossian flag on a remote island beach upon arrival.
Now, both Mr Holloway and Mr Mandarin joined Nigel this evening for an exclusive chat to discuss their “remarkable” feat.
“It’s difficult not to be quite moved, I think, by all of that. It is quite remarkable,” Nigel commented, visibly emotional.
“And the more we learn about the appalling way in which they were treated, the more I feel in my heart,” he added.
Nigel appeared emotional on his show while speaking about the ‘appallling way’ the Chagossians were treated
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GB NEWS
“Good luck to them. They’re posing no threat to anybody if they can make those islands properly habitable. And liveable. All I can do is wish them all the luck in the world.”
Back in the 1960s, the Chagossians who inhabited the island of Diego Garcia were “dumped”, as described by Nigel, for the British Government to build the military base of Diego Garcia, which is shared with the US.
“They were treated absolutely appallingly,” he said. “Most of them fled to this country, and they’d been praying to go back to their homeland.”
Speaking exclusively on GB News, Mr Holloway lauded the group’s establishment of a “permanent settlement” – which is set to be populated by more “in the coming weeks”.
“And we’re going to make this something that Keir Starmer’s Government cannot deny,” he declared.
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“The people of Chagos have come back, and this is going to be something that I hope is a change of fact, something that will mean that the whole geometry, if you like, of the situation changes.”
Putting to Mr Holloway whether he has “technically” broken the law by landing and aiming to establish a settlement, he denied the accusation.
“I mean, how on earth is one breaking the law when we have people here who 60 years ago suffered a crime against humanity, effectively where they were forcibly removed?” he asked.
Continuing on, he fumed: “A group of people forcibly removed and exiled, they were sent to Mauritius, some of them in chains. People died on the boats. Their pets were gassed before leaving.
“They lived in tin shacks. They were told they weren’t worth educating.
“And, belatedly, the British Government gives them passports to come and live in Crawley, near Heathrow Airport.
“And now again, a second time, they’re doing the same thing to them by effectively handing their homeland back to the person, the people that they see as their kind of colonial aggressor, the oppressor, the Mauritian.
“I don’t feel anything at all untoward by what Misley is doing and what we’ve been supporting him in doing. This is a huge injustice that needs to be righted.”